Now It's 'Senator' Cowin

Election '96

The Gop Ex-school Board Member Felled Democrat Charlie Dean In A State Race Watched By National Party Leaders.

November 6, 1996|By Jerry Fallstrom of The Sentinel Staff

TAVARES — Republican Anna Cowin defeated Democrat Charlie Dean for a state Senate seat after a bruising slugfest in which leaders of both parties in Tallahassee and Washington also got in licks.

Cowin, a tenacious former Lake County School Board member, won the District 11 race Tuesday night with 57 percent of the vote. Dean, the former sheriff of Citrus County, checked in with 43 percent after eighty percent of the vote was counted.

In other races, District 42 state Rep. Everett Kelly, D-Lady Lake, withstood a strong challenge from Republican Pam Bronson of Leesburg. Kelly, who took 55 percent of the vote to 45 percent for Bronson, was first elected in 1978.

District 25 state Rep. Stan Bainter, R-Eustis, rolled to a sixth two-year term over Democrat Sandra Green of Eustis. Two other Republican incumbents representing small portions of Lake - Rep. Earl Ziebarth of DeLand and Rep. Jeff Stabins of Spring Hill - also won re-election.

Leaders of both parties, hoping to control the Senate, went after the District 11 seat with a vengeance. The district includes all of Lake and parts of Seminole, Sumter, Marion and Citrus counties.

Cowin, 50, credited her victory to her message of ''less government and more local control and low taxes and better schools and reduced crime.''

She added: ''I'm anxious to get into the job and start representing the people.''

The seat was vacated after one term by Democrat Karen Johnson of Inverness, who made a failed bid for Citrus County school superintendent.

Dean, 57, hoping to receive the torch from Johnson, had complained his name was unfairly sullied by a television advertising blitz funded by the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

He blamed his loss on a $150,000 ''pasting'' he said he received from the committee, which put that much cash into the unprecedented effort to influence the outcome of a state election in Florida.

''You just can't overcome negative stuff,'' Dean said.

A controversial commercial on the Orlando-area airwaves accused Dean of using his clout to get a murder charge reduced to manslaughter for a family friend, of ignoring a warrant against Johnson's daughter and of having management of the Citrus jail taken from him because too many prisoners escaped.

On Thursday, an angry Dean filed suit against the committee, Cowin and the Florida Republican Party, seeking a court order to have the ad stopped and $15,000 in damages for what he said were lies.

Dean accused Cowin of violating a pledge she made not to condone third-party attacks. Cowin said the attack on Dean from Washington was beyond her control, and Cowin's campaign manager said the charges had not been proved false.

On Monday, Dean dropped his bid for an injunction, saying it was too late to make any difference. But he vowed to press ahead with the suit to clear his name.

Gov. Lawton Chiles desperately wanted a Dean victory, saying a Democratic majority was crucial to his plans for his last two years in office.

Dean hoped Chiles' popularity, which according to polls is at an all-time high, would rub off on him. Chiles campaigned for Dean in Lake County, the battleground county in the district, three times and sang Dean's praises in a TV ad.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee weighed in with a mailer attacking Cowin as a liberal and accusing her of raising taxes when she was on the Lake County School Board.

''She's too liberal for us,'' the flier said.

Cowin countered that the discretionary portion of the tax rate decreased by 37 percent during her eight years on the board, which ended with a loss to Pat Hart in 1990.

Florida Education Association-United, piqued by Cowin's call for merit pay for teachers and an end to tenure, also invested in the Dean campaign.

Both candidates pledged to crack down on school violence. Dean, a former teacher, called for police officers in every school. Cowin pledged more money to build detention centers.

Also on the crime front, Cowin called for making prisoners serve 100 percent of their sentence instead of the current 85 percent.

Dean, citing his experience as a sheriff for 16 years, countered that 85 percent was plenty. He said criminals need some motivation to get back into society.